Focus on fundamentals for PHS volleyball in Purple and White Scrimmage

Before raising the curtain on the 2015 season, the Pittsburg Purple Dragon volleyball team played its Purple and White Scrimmage on Thursday afternoon at the high school.

The scrimmage consisted of four games: freshmen vs. freshmen, freshmen vs. junior varsity, varsity vs. junior varsity and then a mix up of the top players playing against each other.

“I basically took their passing stats and that determined the top 18 sand I made sure I had my outsides versus each other and setters versus each other and liberos,” head coach Megan Mantooth said in describing how to determine the top players in the final set. “Just to mix it up a little.”

The junior varsity squad defeated the freshmen 25-8 before the varsity claimed a 25-13 victory over the J.V. in the third match.

Mantooth said one of the things that she was looking for from the players was a better understanding of the rule changes from KSHSAA over the summer.

“There’s new changes on yellow and red cards,” Mantooth said. “There’s new changes on substitutions at ends of timeouts and on the exchanges, making sure that they wait longer. Just some basic things.”

She says the team has handled the changes pretty well.

“It’s nothing that deals with the actual playing. It doesn’t hurt what we do in practice,” Mantooth said.

With practices already in full swing, Mantooth talked about how eager the players are for the season to start.

“The players are really excited,” Mantooth said. “They’ll stick around longer at the end of practices and play. It’s a group that is ready to play and have fun. They are here 100 percent all the time.”

The Purple Dragons return four seniors from last year as well as seven juniors.

“On the varsity team, we’re not really that young,” Mantooth said. “We have a lot of returning players. We have a lot of experience coming back.”

Mary Garrett, Morgan Plank, Abby Harris and Kailey Curtis are the returning seniors.

That experience should be one of the strengths for this year’s squad, while percentages might be an achilles heel.

“The weakness is that we’re trying to improve on our percentages from last year,” Mantooth said. “They were OK with the two-points pass and we’re really going for perfection and we’re having to hustle.”

One of the things the Purple Dragons have been focusing on has been passing techniques and percentages.

“That’s been a huge concentration and we’re getting ready to transition into more net play because we wanted to make sure our back row was solid before starting to make any plays on the front row,” Mantooth said.

The Southeast Kansas League will be a challenge for the Purple Dragons, who have high goals coming the season.

“It’s always a competitive league, all the way around,” Mantooth said. “We’ll be pushing to work against the higher end of the league. PHS has taken league quite a few times in the past and we’d like to get back to that.”

In terms of picking out a player or more who will stand out, Mantooth said it’s too early for that.

“It’s hard to pick that out this early,” she said. “But obviously, we’ve moved some positions around. We’ve had to make some adjustments in how to play certain positions but they are all ready to stepped up and are ready for the challenges.”

The Purple Dragons will begin the season at Labette County facing off against the Grizzlies as well as Independence and Parsons on Thursday, Sept. 3.

One of the things that need to be improved on, according to Mantooth, are the rotations on the floor.

“How well we move from rotation to rotation, not having to question each other where we are on the court. That’s going to be the biggest transition next week in practice.”